“I thought,” Gus said very slowly, “I had made myself clear.” His hand moved to my thigh and squeezed it a bit too hard, and harder again. “If you try to leave me, I will find you, and I will kill your sister.”
I thought I’d misheard him.
And then the truth, too horrific for me to have guessed at, was made clear. There was no game between them. Only true danger. Only a monster hiding behind the handsome face of a man. And I had been blind to it.
“Come on, let’s go home and have a bath, relax, it’s been a long day.”
I was shaking so badly I could hardly walk but he steered me out of the bar and I knew then what a joke I was, thinking I had any control here, thinking Aggie had any. The power was entirely his, and he was using it to hold her hostage. I understood now why she’d tried to get me to leave.
He drove us home and all I could think, as he talked about work, was how I had to get out of this car, I had to get out, I had to get out, I had to open the door and roll backward onto the road and I had to run, just fucking run but of course I couldn’t do that, not without Aggie.
He led me to their bedroom. I was frozen. I needed to speak up, to tell him it was me but nothing was coming out of my mouth except a dry croak. He closed the door and still I was frozen. I had never known fear like this, so liquid, so hot. And then he took my throat in his hands and he squeezed, cutting off my air. This was what he did to her. Did he do it every night? In this room with only one wall between us?
“I thought you understood,” he said, as he choked me, “how fucking much I love you.”
He was a madman. And he was going to kill us.
“Stop,” I managed to gasp, but he didn’t.
The door burst open and there stood Aggie, and Gus dropped his hands from my throat so I could take a shuddering breath and stagger away from him.
“What the fuck?” he demanded.
“Busted,” she said, and smiled.
“You swapped?” There was something frantic in his eyes then and my heart was fleeing my body, we had to get away, he was going to lose it. And then he burst out laughing. He roared with laughter. “That was pretty damn good, I gotta admit. I had no idea.”
Like this was all a big prank.
“You had me going, Inti,” he tells me.
“And I guess we proved whether or not you’d be able to tell,” Aggie said and my head was spinning because what the hell was going on, it was like they were both in on the amusement and then I saw Aggie’s hand make a sign behind her back. She hadn’t signed anything in years.
Go.
She was protecting me. She’d gathered enough of what I’d tried to do and was trying to defuse things. But how could I leave her alone in this room with him? How could I ever leave her alone with him again?
Aggie kissed her husband, and it was me kissing him and I could have been sick. Her hands, she was signing again. Trust me.
And so, like the coward I was, I left her. I went to the bathroom and I did throw up until there was nothing left in me. And then I sat, stiff as a board on the end of my bed, listening for any sounds through that wall. I sat listening until the first light of dawn.
25
Tonight Mayor Andy Oakes calls a meeting at the school about the dead livestock, and we wolf-folk aren’t invited. I don’t like to imagine what they’re saying without us there.
I use the distraction to get groceries and, as I hoped, the aisles are empty. I wander aimlessly, lost in thought and having to retrace my steps. The staff flash me looks and mutter to each other. I’m so preoccupied by this that I push my trolley into a huge display of canned dog food, sending the cans thundering noisily to the ground and rolling every which way.
I scramble on my knees to gather them up while two young cashiers hurry to help me. A girl and a boy, no older than fifteen.
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
“It’s okay, we’ll do it,” the girl says kindly.
“Really, ma’am, you rest yourself,” says the boy.
I give up, sinking onto my bum. It’s hard crawling around when your belly protrudes to the size of a bowling ball. The growth seems to be speeding up, while my energy levels plummet and my back aches. For the first time this morning I Googled whether this was normal, all of it, and discovered that the size of my belly is actually smaller than average. Aggie said the baby is the size of a rockmelon. I put the phone down in a cold panic the second it started telling me things like how the baby can see light now, and coughs and hiccups and dreams.
“Are you the wolf lady?” the girl asks me.
I nod, expecting some sort of … I don’t know, reprimand? But the teenagers stop gathering cans and look at me with excitement.
“What are they like?” she asks. “Have you touched one?”
We’re in the last aisle and there’s no one else around. I lean back against the shelf. “Plenty.”
“When they’re babies or grown?”
“Both.”
This delights them no end. They crowd a little closer.
“Have you been bitten by one?”
“No, not a real bite. They chew and snap when they’re little, but that’s just play.”
“Did they get to know you?”
“Of course. Wolves are family animals. If you raise them, they’ll be loyal until you set them free.” Sometimes even after.
“Why don’t you keep them, then?”
“They’re too wild for that.”
“The ones here,” the girl asks. “Are they really dangerous? ’Cause I saw one one night and it just ran away, so quick you could barely make it out.”
I choose my words. “If you keep your distance there’s nothing to fear. But never try to touch or feed them.”
“What if it’s close?” the boy asks. “I mean, like, if we’re hiking and it’s just there, suddenly.”
“If you come across a wolf in the forest and it doesn’t flee from you, I want you to remember one thing. Never run from it. If you face a wolf you will scare it. If you run, it will hunt you.”
They gaze at me, thrilled. I really hope they’re not about to go looking for a way to test that advice.
“The one I saw…” the girl says softly, “it was beautiful.”
I nod.
“Sorry some people are being so shite,” says the boy. “But that’s not everyone. There’s a whole lot of people who love the idea of wolves in Scotland again. The way it used to be.”
I smile. “Thank you. That means a lot.”
I let them pull me to my feet.
* * *
It’s started snowing when I get outside, having forgotten to buy anything. I look up at the sky, watching the slow sway of the flakes. It’s true, fluffy snow, almost weightless and glowing in the moonlight.
My car is the only one parked here and there’s someone leaning against it. For a split second it’s Gus, the tall broad shape of him, and then he turns and it’s not Gus, it’s Duncan, and I suck in a lungful of air to try to calm the pulse that still won’t calm.
I stop a few paces from him. He’s blocking the driver’s side door. Is he doing that intentionally, so I can’t leave? Jesus, I need to get a grip on myself.
“I need to ask…” Duncan pushes a hand through his hair, which is getting longer, scruffier and more silver. In the neon light of the grocery store he looks sickly, his eyes hollow. A wave of concern fills me.
“Is it mine?” Duncan asks.
I suppose I’ve been expecting this question, dreading it. Although it is slightly offensive—I don’t know how many guys he thinks I was sleeping with.
“No,” I say. “Inasmuch as it isn’t mine, either. I’m giving it up.”
“Is that a roundabout way of saying it is mine? That you and I—we made it together?”
I don’t reply.
“Can I … I’ll help you, Inti. You don’t have to do this alone.”
“You don’t want kids,” I say. “You told me yourself.”
&nb
sp; He lets out a breath, a kind of laugh. “That was true once, before I met you. By the time I said it, it was already a lie.”
Oh god.
“You don’t have to give it up,” he says.
I can barely get the words out. “I want to.”
“Why?” he asks.
I close my eyes, feeling dizzy. “Because there’s nothing good in me anymore, Duncan. I’m just angry, and that’s all.”
“That is such rubbish,” he snaps.
I walk past him to the car and reach for the door handle but I can’t make my hand work to open it, I just stand here trying to remain intact.
“I didn’t kill Stuart,” he says abruptly. “I didn’t think I needed to say it but it seems I do.”
I meet his eyes. “I don’t think I believe you.” There’s nothing else that makes sense. “You were out there,” I say, done with hiding what I know. “Lainey called you, telling you where Stuart was. And you went out to find him.”
“And failed,” Duncan says. “I didn’t find anything.”
“Then why did you lie about her call? Why bother, if not to protect yourself?”
“To protect you!” he exclaims. “I didn’t find anything that night, Inti, but you did, didn’t you? You were out there. If you walked from my place to yours then you were out there same time he was.”
There are snowflakes in his eyelashes, there are some in mine, too, softening the world. I can’t remember any words.
“I keep asking myself the same question,” he admits. “If you did it, would it matter to me? And that goes against everything I’ve ever held on to.”
“It would matter. It matters,” I say. “Death gets under your skin, it stays with you. That’s what you said.”
Scratch, goes the little person inside, scratch go her tiny fingernails. Not now, I beg her. Please, little melon, not now.
“All that matters to me is keeping my sister safe. And I don’t trust you not to hurt us,” I tell him bluntly. “I don’t trust anyone.”
“I’ve been there, Inti.”
“I know you have, and it doesn’t go away.”
“You’re wrong,” he says. “It goes if we let it. I made space for you.”
“You think it matters that there’s love?” I ask. “Love only makes things more dangerous.” I get in the car.
“Inti.”
My windscreen wipers fight the flurries of snow as I drive from the carpark. But it isn’t long before I must pull off the road, unsure I can keep driving. I watch the snow fall in the headlights.
The little person inside me moves again, she spins with such force that I gasp. I press my hand to her and feel her hand press back to me, and like that, she has reached so far beyond all the things I knew, all the guards I built, that she has found me, she has seen, and there will be no more hiding.
26
The drive from Denali to Anchorage was long, and I’d been making it less and less often. But tonight I needed my own bed so I made the trip, only to find men in the house again. It was becoming a common occurrence. Gus was miserable, and he was furious with his wife, who was frightened of him, and was trying to get through the days without “provoking him.” But he wanted her to be as miserable as he was, and me, too, by extension. So he often filled the house with men who drank with an almost defiant need to get drunk. I hated it, and usually escaped back to work. But tonight I was too tired, my day had been too grueling, and I just needed to sleep.
James, his cousin, was visiting from Sydney. He hated me unreservedly, for the offense of having slept with him once and not again, and even though he’d been staying in my house he’d barely spoken a word to me all week. The rest were a mix of Australian friends and the surgeons Gus knew from work. There was a weird kind of competitiveness between the Americans and the Australians, each keen to prove they could drink more and behave worse. The Australians always won: this particular group from Gus’s rugby days were well practiced at being dickheads.
I tried to sneak past but there was the usual call for me to stay for a drink, just one, which always turned into several before I could escape. Tonight I didn’t have the energy to fight it, so I sank onto the couch next to someone called Robbo and took the beer.
Soon there were more beers, then tequila, then cocaine.
I didn’t need any of it to feel drunk, wired, sick. I needed only to be here, watching. I wished Aggie would come home, I wished it desperately. I felt far too old for all of this, I felt as though I had stepped out of my real life into some twisted toxic dream of adolescence. Why did I live in a house with a man who enjoyed this? Why was my sister married to him?
Fear debased me into sitting there, into taking the drinks and smiling along and all the while my mind had a hypervigilance, it raced with strategies of how to get out of this situation without offending anyone.
I watched Gus now, doing shots. He was ignoring me. It would be all right. They would get drunk enough to pass out and I’d go to bed. James sat on my other side, squeezing me tight. His breath smelled foul and his limbs were sloppy. I watched the men around me rile each other up, bulls stamping their hooves and snorting, and I stayed quiet and took the path of least resistance. Ride it out, don’t make a fuss. The last thing I wanted to do was cause some sort of scene. There was an edge of unpredictability to them, they seemed intent on losing themselves and destroying things and I didn’t want to be in their eyeline when an idea came to them.
The door opened and there was my sister. I was flooded with such relief that I almost burst into tears. She took one look at what was going on, clocked my expression, and turned to her husband. “What’s the game, darling? Deal me in.” Then Aggie reached for my hand and pulled me up from the couch.
James grabbed my other wrist. “Come on, Aggie. Don’t be a killjoy. She’s enjoying herself.”
“I just need to talk to her and then we’ll come back and play.”
I could barely hear her over the thumping music, the laughter and booming voices. James let me go and I hurried with Aggie to the kitchen.
“How much have you had to drink? Can you drive?” she asked me.
I shook my head.
“Go upstairs and lock your bedroom door.”
“Come with me.”
She nodded and we were about to go when Gus arrived. “Two for the price of one,” he said. His pupils were big black holes.
“We’re going to bed,” Aggie said.
“No you’re not. You love to play. So play.”
She and Gus shared a long look.
I told myself to relax, just relax, it wasn’t that big a deal, nothing was happening. There were people here. Nothing could happen in front of other people.
Aggie pulled her husband back into the living room so that he wouldn’t remember or care that I was here too, so that I could escape upstairs while I had the chance. I locked my bedroom door and called the police. I made a complaint about the noise and waited for them to come. It took twenty minutes or so and I stuck my head out the window to listen to Gus answering and telling the officers he’d keep it down, and then they left. And the party continued.
I called them again and this time I told them a fight had broken out and people were in danger but when they came back they could clearly see that no one was fighting, and what was I meant to do? What could I say if I phoned them again? Nothing had actually happened. Maybe Aggie was enjoying herself down there. Maybe she knew how to manage this situation. But Mum taught us the warning signs and there had been a million. I had spent my life resenting her for seeing the worst in people but as I stood in my room, listening to the noise from below, I realized how naïve I’d been to assume I knew the depths of what people were capable of.
You were meant to leave, when you saw the warning signs, but what if you couldn’t? What if he was too dangerous to leave? What if your sister thought staying meant protecting you? What if she was right, and this was how we survived him? By mitigating the risk?
I heard a thu
mp from outside. I unlocked my door. Gus was taking Aggie into their room. James was following. She was barely conscious but she flashed me a look as she disappeared behind the door, not of control, but of terror.
Every doubt vanished. I knew unequivocally that staying was no longer an option. That there was no longer any way to defuse. Something very bad was about to happen and my sister needed help.
I surged forward. “Hey!”
Gus glanced at me. “Stay out of this, kid.”
“It’s okay, Inti, go to bed,” Aggie said from within.
“Or you can join us, if you want?” James suggested.
“You’re not doing this. I’m calling the cops.”
“Jesus, relax,” James said, and then he twisted my wrist until my phone dropped to the floor. He stomped on it with the heel of his boot. Laughed. Told me again to relax, they were just having some fun. Went into my sister’s bedroom and shut the door.
I threw myself at the door. “Let her out of there, you sick fucks!”
When they didn’t answer I ran downstairs and told the men that Aggie needed help, that Gus and James had locked her in the bedroom, but instead of helping they laughed and turned away, and not one of them would lend me their phone.
I ran back upstairs and I started kicking the door, trying to get the handle loose, I threw my shoulder against the timber over and over. I would get this door open even if I had to tear it apart with my hands and teeth and destroy myself in the doing.
“Deal with the bitch, would you?” I heard James say from inside.
The door opened and I was faced with Gus, too big to push past, too strong to do anything about. “You really want in?” he asked, and I didn’t know what he was asking me except that I did. “You want to see this?” What happened in this room was going to happen regardless of my efforts to stop it. There was nothing I could do, not against the size and strength of them, not when there would be no help from downstairs, not after my phone was destroyed.
All I could do, it seemed, was be with my sister so she didn’t have to be alone.
Once There Were Wolves Page 23
